Changing my environment to fit me
I feel like I’m having somewhat of an epiphany. I’ve always thought of myself as being pretty neurotypical. Sure, I’ve got some PTSD, but it doesn’t affect my day-to-day life almost at all these days.
During a conversation with my brother about his own journey with what he and his therapist are pretty sure is ADHD, I found myself relating a little bit too much. This prompted me to start doing some reading and, for potentially the first time in my life, set my ego full aside in evaluating patterns in my behavior. As my mental list of potentially abnormal patterns grew, I started a list in my notes app: hyperfixating on my homelab for hours at a time; having what feels like an unusually hard time motivating myself to get work done - almost the same kind of work that I do for fun in my homelab; overestimating how much free time I have before I have to leave for an event; the list goes on.
Now, I should say that I am not trying to self-diagnose, and I am seeking out proper support looking into this. But, I think I’ve always been too far in that direction, blocking myself from considering the possibility that something could be fundamentally different about how I interact with and perceive the world.
I’ve also talked to a few long-time friends - including my girlfriend, with whom I have live with for a few years - about my ADHD hunch. Nearly all of them reacted like it was a fact of life that they’d known about for years. But this was news to me!
Looking at myself through a more chaotic, ADHD-esque lens, things have started to make sense. And with that, the realization that I have tried to change myself and my own behavior to fit with the environment around me, but I have not tried much to change the environment around me to fit with my natural self and behavior.
For example, one project this weekend might involve reorganizing my home office to bring more storage closer to my desk. That way, it’s the same amount of effort to put something away where it belongs as it is to simply put it on my desk. I always tell myself that I’ll get to it later, but of course, I never do.
Another idea is to figure out a better method of managing the ideas and to-do’s that I think of, decide are important, but forget about two minutes later. To be fair, some of those ideas are not urgent or important at all. But others do carry more weight, like getting my car’s alignment checked because I keep rolling over the curb when I park at home.
I don’t want to overshare or doxx myself, so I’ll limit it here. It’s also only been about a week since this epiphany began to bloom, but it does feel like this new perspective is starting to make things click. I’m sure this is not a unique experience, but it is new and impactful to me.